Dear Editor,
Picture a young woman, nine months pregnant, compelled by forces beyond her control to leave home and make an arduous journey with her betrothed to a foreign land, unsure of their welcome there.
At this time of year, most of us raised in the Christian tradition would pretty immediately, if unconsciously, imagine this young woman as Mary, “heavy with child,” compelled by a decree by Roman ruler Caesar Augustus to travel with Joseph to Bethlehem, to be counted in a compulsory census. Given the secularization of the Nativity story, even people of other faiths–or no faith at all–know Jesus’s birth story, if only through secular sources like Linus standing in the spotlight on stage to recite the story in the animated classic, “A Charlie Brown Christmas.”
But what if this story is not Biblical at all but contemporary? In fact, this story is that of one of the asylum seekers who came to Vermont just a few years ago with her husband. She walked through the treacherous jungle of the Darien Gap that links South America to Central America and on to the US-Mexico border, all while many months pregnant, to seek asylum from the violence and hopelessness of her native land. And what if you knew that this woman’s story, unlike Mary’s, is not at all unique, but far too familiar, and one that at times has resulted in the death of the mother and her unborn child, either due to the terrible conditions of the journey or her treatment at the border?
Since 2018, the nine community-based organizations that comprise the Vermont-New Hampshire Asylum Support Network members have organized in their backyards to welcome strangers like this pregnant woman and her husband. Residents of Vermont towns from Brattleboro to Burlington and St. Johnsbury to Rutland have banded together to provide asylum seekers with safe and warm places to stay and other assistance when little else is available.
Stories of welcoming strangers are not confined to one or another country or culture. Indeed, admonitions to welcome the stranger with extravagant hospitality abound in societies around the globe and across time lest the stranger turn out to be a friend—or perhaps an angel, an ancestor, or even a Savior!
One reason the value of welcoming the stranger has such universal power may be that so many of us—perhaps most of us—have at one time or another been “a stranger in a strange land.” Indeed, most Vermonters have ancestors who came to the United States at some point over the past three centuries, looking for safety, opportunity, and the freedom to pursue their dreams. The asylum seekers coming to Vermont right now are no different from our ancestors. They seek protection for themselves and their children. They yearn for the chance to live free of the threat of violence or persecution for who they are, the color of their skin, their religious beliefs, or their political perspective. They are ready to work hard, contribute to their communities, and live in peace with their neighbors.
In other words, they are just like the rest of us.
We in the VT-NH ASN groups around Vermont ask that each of us remember our own family’s “Coming to America” story and greet the newest immigrants to our country—whether refugee, asylum seeker, migrant worker, or some other designation—with generosity of spirit and the understanding that we–or someone in our background—were also strangers here once, too.
The Vermont-New Hampshire-Asylum Support Network
